Page 116 of This Monster of Mine

A hint of the wildness she’d seen earlier returned to his features. “You were watching.”

Flushing, she cleared her throat. “Your hand.”

He looked like he’d long forgotten that it was bleeding. Taking it, she held herself back from pressing into him when he curled his fingers around hers, holding them still as she quickly mended the cuts.

Kadra gave her a dark smile, helping her onto Caelum. “Home?”

Wisdom save me. Aoran Tower wasn’t her home. She was long overdue to find her own domus. She took the reins, searching for common sense and finding none.

“Home,” she agreed.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Praefa was a thin crescent in the night sky, barely lighting the now-familiar paved ribbon to Decimus’s home on which Sarai rode beside Kadra.

With a day and a half before trial, they’d decided to transport the scutum to Aoran Tower. Cato had warily made space for it in the wine cellar, with Kadra dryly assuring him that it wouldn’t explode while he was home.

I’m so close. The scutum would be exposed as fraudulent, and Aelius and Tullus would have no further hold over her. Granted, she had nothing yet to prove they were behind the dead Petitors and Othus’s murder, but it was a solid start to destabilizing them.

The air hung damp and chilly, winter giving way to the wet month of spring. Sarai glanced at Kadra. Posture impeccable as ever, he appeared lost in thought.

“What’ll you do when this is over?” she asked.

The question seemed to throw him. It was a moment before he answered. “I’ll have peace.” A bitter edge underscored the words.

He’d been like Jovian and Livia, too, she realized. Trapped by knowledge he couldn’t act on and waiting for enough allies so he could bring Aelius and Tullus to justice. For all her fear of the trial, she was glad that he’d seen an ally in her.

Dismounting by Decimus’s haphazardly repaired front door, she squinted at the lack of light within. Even the windows had been boarded up.

“Your vigiles must be exhausted after last night.” Sarai secured Caelum. “I thought they’d be on watch and alert for—”

Kadra raised a finger to his lips, gliding off his horse with the fluidity of a predator. He examined the domus for a long moment before he cursed in a manner far different than he had at the pleasure house. Before she could ask why, he gripped her hand and steered her back to her horse, pressing a dagger into her palm.

“Ride back a quarter mile, and you’ll find Gaius. He’ll accompany you home.”

She stared at him like he’d sprouted two heads. “Why inhavïdwould I do that?”

There was a grim tension to him, harder and colder than she’d seen yet.

“Kadra.” She blanched, stock-still. “What aren’t you telling me?”

Grasping her shoulders, he turned her to face him, staring beyond her to something at the front of the house. Something she wasn’t seeing.

Sarai tried to turn.

“Don’t,” he said softly, but she stepped away.

She had to know. Trembling, she walked to the front door, pushed it open, and staggered back.

The air reeked. An ugly brown painted the interior, a mass of limbs scattered about the narrow entryway, with a few toes ghoulishly stuck in the doorframe. A dark object rolled out of the shadows, its path no longer impeded by the door. The head came to a rest by her feet, bloated with death, eyes staring blankly at the ground.

Decimus. Or what was left of him.

As if manipulated by some magic outside of her body, her head swiveled toward the windows, where Kadra had been looking. She’d thought they were boards. They weren’t. Kadra’s vigiles had stuck to their duty after all. They watched through the window even now.

Blood trickling from her throat. Her face hitting the ground.Sarai slammed a hand against the doorjamb.

“He’s dead.” She stared at Decimus’s slack face, as though there was a possibility the man could come back to life. “He’s dead,” she repeated. And she already knew that the scutum was gone.

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